FIG. 1 illustrates a portion of a conventional communications network such as a WiMAX network. As shown, the conventional network includes a user terminal 100 in two-way communication with a subscription server 106 and a device management server 108. The two-way communication may take place over one or more wired or wireless links. The two-way communication may be performed using any suitable communication protocol (e.g., Internet Protocol, WiMAX, EV-DO, UMTS, etc.). Each of the subscription server 106 and the device management server 108 also communicate with a back office 110 via one or more wired or wireless links.
A back-office is a term used to describe various elements used by a service provider to handle subscriber information. In one example, back-office 110 may comprise a collection of servers and computers at a single or multiple network entities within a service provider's core network. Operations and processes performed at the back-office 110 may be performed as computer implemented processes with or without human operator intervention.
The user terminal 100 may be any electronic device capable of communicating over a wired or wireless packet-switched network such as a cellular phone, personal digital assistant (PDA), laptop computer, desktop computer, modem, residential gateway, set-top box, etc.
As shown in FIG. 1, the user terminal 100 includes a web browser or web client 102 and a device management client 104. The web client 102 communicates with the subscription server 106 and the device management client 104 communicates with the device management server 108.
Before the user terminal 100 is capable of accessing network services (e.g., multimedia services such as VoIP, Video, Internet, etc.) provided by a particular service provider, the user terminal 100 must be authorized and configured appropriately to do so. This is referred to as activation and initial configuration. Such activation and initial configuration over a wireless link is sometimes referred to as over-the-air (OTA) activation and initial configuration.
Conventionally, over-the-air activation and initial configuration of user terminal 100 includes three steps:                1) subscription;        2) bootstrapping; and        3) device management.        
Subscription is the process by which a user subscribes to network services provided by a service provider via a user terminal. Bootstrapping is a process by which the service provider provides some initial user credentials to the user terminal after the subscription step is complete. Device management is a session in which the service provider downloads and continuously updates relevant device configurations for accessing the service provider's network services.
A conventional over-the-air provisioning process will be described with regard to the communication flow embedded in FIG. 1. In FIG. 1, the arrows and corresponding numbers refer to message or communication flows.
In FIG. 1, messages 1-4 are considered part of the subscription step, while messages 5-6 are considered part of the bootstrapping step. Message 7 begins a standard device management process, which is well-known in the art. Various existing standards protocols, such as simple network management protocol (SNMP), Open Mobile Alliance Device Management (OMA-DM), and Digital Subscriber Line Forum TR-069, may be used to provide device management.
Referring to FIG. 1, (at 1) the user terminal 100 transmits one or more messages to the subscription server 106 (also referred to as a web server) via the web client 102. The message may be well-known hyper-text-transfer-protocol (HTTP) messages. These messages may include subscription information, such as, the user's billing address, credit card information, etc.
Still referring to FIG. 1, upon receiving the subscription information from the user terminal 100, the subscription server 106 sends the user's subscription information to the back-office 110 (at 2).
The back-office 110 adds the user to a subscriber database, and upon completion, acknowledges that the subscription was successful by sending an acknowledgement message to the subscription server 106 (at 3). Upon receiving the successful subscription acknowledgement from the back-office 110, the subscription server 106 transmits a web page back to the web client 102 (at 4). The web client 102 indicates the successful subscription process to the user.
Still referring to FIG. 1, the back-office 110 then populates the provisioning/device management server 108 with user credentials for the newly subscribed user (at 5). The device management server 108 then pushes the supplied user credentials to the device management client 104 (at 6) thereby bootstrapping the user terminal 100. In response to receiving the user credentials, the device management client 104 contacts the device management server 108 to begin a device management session (at 7). As is well-known, some small variations in the conventional method illustrated in FIG. 1 may exist. For example, the server responsible for the bootstrapping steps (5 and 6) may be different from the server responsible for device management.
Within a network such as the networks shown in FIG. 1, multiple user terminals 100 may be physically located and served for their customers. Even though these devices are under physical control of the customer, the network operator still controls and manages these devices remotely via standard device management (DM) protocols such as OMA-DM or TR-069.
Typically, different types of user terminals or devices utilize different DM protocols. For example, home-based devices, (e.g., a set-top box or the like) typically use the TR-069 protocol, whereas mobile devices (e.g., a cell phone or the like) typically use an OMA-DM client. Along the same lines, a network operator supporting mobile devices will most likely support an OMA-DM infrastructure, while an operator supporting home devices will most likely support TR-069.
As network deployments converge, the differences between mobile devices and home devices become less clear. A number of user terminals or devices (e.g., WiMAX terminals, WiFi/cell phones, etc.) are both home-based and mobile. Accordingly, network operators are increasingly interested in deploying converged networks capable of accommodating both types of devices and including converged devices that offer both home and mobile functionality. To manage such a complex system of devices, network operators must be capable of accommodating devices with different types of DM clients.
A conventional approach to resolve this issue is to create a new unified DM protocol for all types of devices that would replace existing special-purpose DM protocols. But, replacing well-established DM protocols with a new protocol is relatively costly and difficult.